


all that remains

by dollylux



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Animal Death, Background Childhood Sexual Abuse, Gore, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-25
Updated: 2018-09-25
Packaged: 2019-07-17 07:10:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16090613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dollylux/pseuds/dollylux
Summary: It still felt like life in his hands, even when it was cold.





	all that remains

**Author's Note:**

  * For [homo_pink](https://archiveofourown.org/users/homo_pink/gifts).



> another offering left on the altar of homopink. love you down to the bones<3
> 
> (previously posted on tumblr)

Billy never hurt them. He only gave them a new home after they stopped being alive anymore.

There’s no saying when it started because the memories before age ten are a little hazy, but the first time he can remember leaning down and scooping up a baby bird that lay very still beneath a tree and flicking a few ants off of it, it didn’t feel like something new.

It still felt like life in his hands, even when it was cold.

He’s not picky about his collection. There are even some that he’s never identified, bones that he found while wandering the woods behind the Carolinis’ house, getting lost in the only place he feels safe. He catalogues everything carefully, keeps a tear of paper next to each bone with the date and where he found it (Feb 8 1994 - 5 big steps from the dead tree by the fence), just in case he’ll be able to identify it later. 

The stack of books tucked away under his bed from the library are helping him learn how, even as he stumbles over the big words and gets lost in some of the diagrams.

So far, he has 16 full skeletons: 1 dog, the 2 puppies that had been in her tummy, 2 cats, 1 rabbit (small enough that he calls it a bunny), 3 possums, 4 birds, 1 raccoon, and the crown jewel of his collection - a delicate, beautiful fox. He had found her on Christmas Day, frozen in her sleep in the snow around the back of the house. Billy had been real upset, had been fresh from Danny’s room and hurting bad down there and on his chest and face, but all of it was forgotten the second he saw her. He’d scooped her up and held her close, trying to warm her, like maybe he could bring her back to life.

Billy’s learned the hard way that nobody stays close to him. Not when they can leave anyway.

When she’d started to decay in the old toolshed behind the abandoned house next door, he’d sat on the frozen ground beside her and cried, not caring that her fur was coming off in clumps as he petted her.

He’s just twelve, so he doesn’t know how to keep things with him when he wants them to stay. Not yet. But it’s the number one thing on his list to learn. Even more than figuring out what bones are from what animal.

Sophie--his little fox--had started to go away just like all the others, but Billy found a knife in the garage that Mr Carolini uses for slicing up the fish he catches, and he’d started in on Sophie’s soft belly with a clean cut to separate fur from skin. She wasn’t perfect, not to any outside eyes, but he’d managed to preserve most of her beautiful coat. Her pelt stayed with Billy in his bedroom, tucked inside his pillowcase where he can snuggle down with her as he sleeps, so he can pet her thick fur and feel like she’s watching over him while he lets his guard down long enough to sleep.

Her body had eroded more and more down to the white bones beneath until he had no choice but to gather her decaying remains and wash them clean, spending hours and hours picking off small bites of flesh and using an old toothbrush and diluted bleach stolen from the dollar store to get her nice and moon-pale. 

Now she sits in a big old toolbox left behind in the shed, one he’d emptied out to make room for her, that he could close the lid and keep her safe in. He opens it up and talks to her all the time, brings her flowers and tells her about the other friends he finds, that he makes to keep.

He’s so happy she’s pretty again.

\--

Danny’s been looking for him all morning, but Billy knows how to stay quiet and still. There’s a netless basketball goal on an overgrown patch of concrete behind the house, and this Saturday morning, like most of them, it’s packed with teenage boys.

Billy’s a few yards away, close enough to watch where Danny goes but hidden in among the bramble and rotting vine where nobody but him ever wants to be. He’s got a copy of _Lord of the Flies_ from the library with only fifty-two pages left to read and some soggy, brown apple slices he saved from yesterday’s lunch. Plenty to tide him over until Danny leaves with his friends for the mall.

He’s so lost in the web of Simon’s tragedy that he doesn’t realize when it starts to rain. He also doesn’t realize that the boys have stopped playing basketball and are now crowded around something near the chain link fence separating their house from the neighbor’s. It’s the quiet that makes him tense, and the too interested way the group of them are leaning down to look at something in the grass makes Billy’s stomach flip.

Billy knows that foster family’s the only family he’s got, but he doesn’t like Danny. Not even a little. He loses his place in the book and flinches when he hears Danny yell, and he stops breathing when Danny crowds up against one of his friends, some boy an inch or so shorter than him but he’s broader. And he looks meaner.

“I said back the fuck off,” the guy says, basketball trapped between his hip and his arm, and he’s staring right into Danny’s eyes, taking steps forward that make Danny actually stumble back.

“Frankie, stop bein’ such a fuckin’ pussy. It’s a goddamn mouse. What do you care if I stomp it?”

Billy can’t even blink, and he can’t look away even though he wants to. He wants to so bad. Danny pushes forward again, and a dull pop of sound makes Billy gasp, his body reacting before his mind can catch up.

He only realizes what’s happened when Danny hits the ground.

And it’s a testament to Danny and Frank’s personalities that all their friends just stand over Danny and stare at him, nobody moving to help him up, to defend him. Billy can see the red of Danny’s rage all the way from here.

Another guy pulls Danny away, and he’s yelling back at Frankie about how he’s dead, how Danny’s gonna beat his ass, using every colorful word any sixteen year old serial rapist would spew. 

Lance’s truck starts up and suddenly everybody’s gone, disappeared in a grind of mud and gravel. Only Frank is left, standing where his friends left him, his eyes on the ground.

Billy is crouched by the tree now, holding on to the damp trunk so tight the bark digs into his skin. He wants to go over, to see how the mouse is, to see what the guy’s gonna do about it, but his terror of Danny and anyone who thinks he’s okay enough to hang out with keeps him glued to the spot. 

“You got a box?” The guy asks, not looking over at Billy but he can tell by the pitch of his voice that he’s talking to him. Billy sits up straight, nervous as a cat.

“...Me?”

Frankie turns his head then, meeting Billy’s eyes even as he drops to a crouch, the movement strangely graceful for such a thick, square-shouldered boy. Billy stands up, seen now so there’s no point in hiding anymore. He clutches his book and leaves the apples for the birds and squirrels. Frank doesn’t repeat himself, and Billy doesn’t wait for him to.

His too small shoes squish and sink into the mud as he runs through the rain to the shed next door, Billy’s one sanctuary, the place where he feels safe and in complete control. 

Of course he’s got a box.

It’s an old cigar box with pretty ladies and a cursive brand name printed on the top, and despite the dirt and bent up corners, it’s dry and sturdy and Frankie looks grateful when Billy rushes up and pushes it into his hands.

He’s not good at looking at eyes when they’re close.

“Thanks,” Frankie says, setting the box down and reaching into the grass to unearth something nested there, being as gentle as Billy’s ever seen anybody be with anything. There’s some tiny movement between his hands and then he’s got them cupped around something small and lowering it into the box. He closes the lid fast and stands up with it in his big hands, and Billy takes a couple of steps back once he realizes how much shorter than Frank he really is.

“Is… is he okay?” he manages to ask, his hands working fitfully in the soggy sleeves of his hoodie. His hair is soaked and sticking to his forehead and his cheeks, sending lazy rivers of rain down his cold face. He barely notices.

“Should be,” Frankie replies. He holds the box level with Billy’s face, giving a nod down at it. “You can look, if you want.”

Billy glances up at Frankie’s forehead and then the strange bungle of his nose, but he can tell that his eyes are brown, same as Billy’s. Just maybe not as dark.

Nobody’s got eyes dark as Billy’s.

He lifts one side of the lid and peers in, coming face to face with big black eyes too much like his own and a soft poof of brown and grey. His whiskers work furiously under little pink hands, like he’s cleaning his face. He scurries to one side of the box when he realizes he’s being watched, his little nails scratching at the bottom of the box.

“What’s his name?” Billy asks, his fingers twitching to reach in and pet him, to touch that soft fur while it’s still warm. A noise from Frankie draws his eyes up, his cheeks already hot for even being heard in the first place.

“What makes you think he’s gotta name?” Frankie’s amused more than mean, and his eyes are almost kind when Billy looks at them for the briefest glance. “Who you think gave it to ‘em?”

Billy shrugs in a big lift and a big drop, falling quiet as he struggles not to pout. He lets the lid fall closed on the box again and takes a step back, hands returning to the inside of his sleeves. 

“Maybe it’s Arthur,” the guy says after a long beat of silence, thick finger tapping the side of the box thoughtfully. His eyebrows lift and he’s almost kinda smiling at Billy.

“Artie, Billy offers, his face hurting from hiding a smile of his own. Frankie snorts, and Billy feels it like a jolt to the system when Frankie throws an arm around his shoulders and pulls him in close, drowning Billy in his effortless warmth and his easy affection. He hopes Frankie can’t feel his heart racing.

“Artie.” A nod. It’s decided. The rain has slowed to a greyed mist, the kind of day that drives you indoors to try and warm your bones. They start a slow meander through the grass and towards the shed he’d just come out of, and he’s terrified of Frank seeing. Seeing everything. 

“What about you?” Frank’s saying. Billy tips his head, looks up at him. He can smell the sweat on him from basketball, can tell it’s been awhile since he washed his Alice in Chains t-shirt. He finds that he doesn’t mind. That he even leans into him a little and breathes deep. 

“Hmm?” Billy’s distracted but not nervous anymore that Frank’s interested in hurting him in one way or another. The shed’s getting closer and closer with every step, and Billy doesn’t have the heart or spine or luxury of keeping Frankie out.

“Name?”

“Billy,” he replies, his arms folded tightly across his chest because he’s not sure what else to do with them. The door is held closed by a block of wood nailed to the frame, and a twist of it has the shed opening up, letting light in and the unmistakable scent of death out.

“Frank,” the guy says, but he doesn’t step inside. He lets go of Billy and turns to face him, and there’s something about his posture or the way he’s searching Billy’s face, but their eyes lock and a whole lifetime of conversations happens between them before either of them dares to even blink.

Billy’s heart is racing, and he finds that for the first time in his entire remembered life, he doesn’t want to look away from someone.

“Will you show me?” Frank asks, the box in his hands scritching softly. Billy’s spent years coming up with new ways to hide from people. He doesn’t even try to formulate an excuse with Frank. He nods and a long tuck of black hair settles in a wing along his wet cheek.

The chance of being understood is too much for him to resist.

There’s no real light in the shed, nothing high-tech about it. And when Billy pulls the door closed behind them and nudges a cement block over to keep it that way, the small space is dark as a night on a full moon.

“H-Hold on,” he says, rushing over to one of the many shelves and digging around for the stolen Bic he’d left there. A hurricane lamp with just enough oil to be worth lighting sits next to a pile of rib bones Billy found last week off a walking trail in the park, just seven little curves of bone picked clean by scavengers and waiting to be useful. 

Billy watches in the new light as Frank takes it all in, walking the close perimeter and eyeing the nips of bone clustered in mismatched piles and the carefully wired full skeletons, ones that he’d painstakingly drilled tiny holes in to twist stolen copper between, trying the best he knows how to preserve the creature there, the semblance of life. 

He’s terrified of Frank’s verdict.

“You kill ‘em all?” Frank asks, clutching the cigar box close now, like he might have to protect the mouse from Billy. His throat closes up as he shakes his head, desperate to be understood as fast as he can. He’s been waiting for so long.

“No,” he tells him, stepping closer so Frank can see his face, just in case he can see truth. “No, I would never… I couldn’t. I… I find ‘em all. They’re already gone. Sometimes just gone, sometimes long gone. I just… I just save ‘em.”

“For what?” Frank’s finished his self-guided tour and is now looking around for a place to sit, and he decides to perch on the toolbox where Sophie sleeps. Billy swears he can feel the shape of his heart pressed against his ribs.

“So they won’t be lonely.” The words lack conviction but he means them, distracted as he may be. He blinks back into the present and looks up into Frank’s eyes again, finding nothing there but simple curiosity. Billy tries for words closer to the truth.

“So I won’t be lonely,” he adds, almost too soft to hear.

Frank’s watching him with so much intensity that Billy’s face flushes, and he finds that he can’t hold his gaze when he’s being seen so clearly. Quiet settles between them until Billy can’t hear anything but the rain picking up in the world beyond their own and their twinned breaths; his own rabbit rushed and Frank’s steady, deep.

“What are you gonna do with Artie?” he asks the hard packed dirt between his muddy shoes. He’s afraid it’ll break the spell, but it’s still sparking in the air after Frank shrugs.

“Take him home and check him over. Make sure he’s okay. Give him some water and a peanut butter cracker or somethin’. I’ll take him out and let him go in the woods near my place tomorrow. Supposed to be sunny.”

“Will you…” He shifts back and forth, leaving boy-light footprints overlapping in the dirt. “Will you let me know? Just… next time you’re around. Just if he did okay.”

“Sure, kid,” Frank says, and there’s a smile in his voice. Billy looks up just in time to see the end of it. It makes him want to hop in place or something. “Listen, I’m gonna get out of here. Shift starts in a couple hours.”

He pats the side of the box with a broad hand, chewing on his bottom lip like he has more to say.

“You take care, okay?”

Billy’s run out of words. Or there are too many crowding at the back of his throat. He nods.

He stays where he is long after the door closes behind Frank and leaves him with just the rain and the lonely cadence of his own breath. The rain has soaked through to his skin and is making him shake and shiver all over, even deep in his tummy, even his teeth. He blows out the lamp and sits on the floor in the dark, a hand on the warm spot Frank left on Sophie’s trunk just to remind himself that he’d actually been here, they’d actually had a moment. That’s what that was, right? It was special.

The memory of Frank’s arm around him, of the animal heat of his body pressed up along his side has Billy drifting through the rest of his day, existing only in his own mind where he’s found a new haven.

He’s finally made a warm friend.

 

\--

 

Five days later, there’s a knock on the shed door around dusk. Billy’s reading stolen _X-Men_ comics by flashlight and trying to be as quiet as possible in case Danny’s skulking around.

Billy’s finally feeling all healed up, finally walking okay again.

The terror that takes over makes his whole body seize up. The comic wrinkles in his clutched up hand. And maybe it takes him longer than he realizes to recover, because the voice coming from the other side of the door is soothing, reassuring. Familiar like being found by a dream again.

“Bill, it’s Frank. Lemme in?”

The knees of Billy’s jeans get dirty as he scurries on them across the floor and shoves the block out of the way, and Frank has the cigar box once again when he steps inside and secures the door behind him.

Billy’s heart sinks.

“Did… is--”

“No, no,” Frank interrupts, flashing him a smile. “Artie’s fine. Prolly gettin’ it on with a hot girl mouse by the creek. He’s got it made.”

Billy grins and shakes his head, especially at the talk of sex. He hides the comics behind him as subtly as possible, just in case Frank thought only little kids read stuff like that.

“Good,” he says back, staring up and up at Frank’s long, solid body, and he can’t help but notice how soft Frank’s expression is when he looks at Billy right back.

“I just, uh. Wanted to bring your box back. Thanks for the help the other day.” The box exchanges hands and Frank takes a step back, hands dipping into his pockets.

“I was happy to do it. To… to help. To help Artie. He needed us.”

He feels young when he tugs at his sleeves, at the place where he’s slowly but surely picking a hole in the ribbed knit.

“Didn’t he?” he ventures, unsure.

“For sure,” Frank says. Another smile, just a twitch. Like Frank’s face isn’t used to the motion. “Listen, I was just on my way to work. I just wanted to--”

“I want to give you something,” Billy says suddenly, jumping up from the dirt in a sudden burst of courage. He feels how hot his face is, but he presses on. “I just… I need you to have something.”

“What, you find a hurt woodpecker or somethin’?” Frank’s teasing, and Billy doesn’t have to be brave enough to see his face to know it. He shakes his head and turns away from him, busying himself with opening up the big toolbox where his prized possession lives so he doesn’t have to think about words like _crush_ and _flirting_ and _safe_.

It takes three full, deep breaths, but he opens the lid to Sophie’s resting place. He peers in at her one last time before he takes a step back, letting Frank in to see.

“I… I want you to have her.”

His hands tangle together in a jumble of nerves as Frank crouches and looks in at her, using the flashlight abandoned on the floor to really see her. It takes a long time, but Frank finally looks away, finally gives Billy all his attention back.

“She a fox?” Frank asks, soft, like he’s amazed or something. Billy nods, so happy he could burst at all his messy seams.

“I found her when she just… just passed,” he tells him, the words tripping over each other to get out, to tell Sophie’s story. “She froze in the snow. She was still so soft and I kept her in here and let her take her time to get down to the bones. It took me two months to wire her together. I… I drew pictures to remember where they all go. Her name is Sophie. She’s…”

He looks in at her again, at the glint of bone in the light Frank’s holding.

“She’s my best friend.”

Frank’s quiet for a long time, and Billy’s shocked to find that Frank’s looking at him instead of Sophie when he finally checks. Frank’s smiling like he’s been doing it for a long time, like the soft, golden glow from a low wattage bulb. Billy’s caught up again, couldn’t look away even if he wanted to.

“I can’t take your best friend,” Frank says in near a whisper. It’s all so careful that Billy feels precious, protected even by Frank’s words. Tears hurt his eyes, make him blink a lot, but they’re still looking at each other. Seeing each other.

“But--”

“How about if I promise to come visit everyday? Both of you. Surely she won’t mind bein’ a third wheel, right?”

Billy pushes up onto the tips of his toes, and his grin is just as bright as Sophie is all over.

“I’ve never heard her complain,” he tells Frank who busts out laughing, his smile so infectious that Billy has to clutch the box to his chest to keep from hugging him.

“Alright, it’s settled. I’ll come over tomorrow after school. That okay?” He’s near the door again, hand out to feel for the seam. He’s about to leave again. Billy shuffles forward to seal up the space between them. He nods, and maybe he’s even still smiling.

Frank leans over and he doesn’t smell like sweat anymore, doesn’t smell like anything but cigarettes and a nearly clean shirt, but smell doesn’t matter when lips touch you for the first time, when all the warmth in the world is focused and pressed into your skin for you to keep forever. Just yours.

Just his.

“Bye,” Frank whispers there, sealing it.

Billy nods again, a boy so unused to talking that he has no instinct to reply. He chews on his mouth so hard he tastes metal and salt, but it doesn’t hide his smile. Not by far.

He makes sure Frank is gone, that there’s nobody around but them, but his voice trembles when he drops back down to the floor and reaches into the open box to touch Sophie’s cool body, petting along the delicate notches of her spine.

“Did you hear that?” he asks her, confession soft. The room feels bright with his helpless grin. “He likes us.”

**Author's Note:**

> [rebloggable post on tumblr](https://dollyluxed.tumblr.com/post/178431423958/all-that-remains-frank-castlebilly-russo)


End file.
